


Mhaimeo í amaideach

by JauntyHako



Category: Fallout (Video Games)
Genre: Cait breaking under the responsibility of having grandchildren, Coursers having put the fear of god into them, F/F, Hancock making faces, MacCready losing his appetite for sweets, Spoilers for the Main Quest, one thousand grandkids being in dire need of sweaters and cookies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 08:01:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5449289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JauntyHako/pseuds/JauntyHako
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cait isn't the family-type. So when she learns she has, by extension, acquired a rather large family, she may go a bit overboard with things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mhaimeo í amaideach

Cait stared out of the window, mouth half open, hands clenched in her lap. She didn't react to Nora's hesitant attempts at making contact again. She seemed to have lost all connection to reality.

“Darling?” Nora said, wondering if maybe she hadn't approached this the wrong way. Although there was really no real precedent for this kind of revelation. Cait snapped out of her momentary apathy caused by severe emotional shock.

“You mean … all of them?” she asked. Nora had no other choice but to nod meekly. It had come as a surprise to her, too, but at least she'd had the added benefit of at least knowing about being a mother first. Cait could call no such privilege her own.

“But that's hundreds.” she said numbly.   
“Close to a thousand, actually. Minus the ones that escaped over the years.”

“A thousand.” Cait echoed. Her soul appeared to be in the process of leaving her body. “And they all are …?”

Nora nodded again. “Our grandchildren. Technically.”

Cait's brain must have overheated. She didn't seem able to process this particular chunk of information.

“A thousand grandkids?” she said and fell silent. Nora waited anxiously for the final verdict, wondered if Cait would run for the hills. Most people brought some baggage into a relationship. Few had in their tow immediate descendants of that number, all of them consisting of a new form of life altogether. X6-88 walked past the window, greeting Nora politely and that seemed to bring Cait back to her senses.

“I'm not ready for this kind of commitment.” she exclaimed. “I can't even knit!”

 

While Cait may not have possessed the ability to knit awkward sweaters for a thousand synthetic humans, she nonetheless rose up to the task in her own special way.

“You are in deep trouble, chasing your sister across the Commonwealth like that!”

Nora stood on an upturned trailer overlooking the ruined streets of Boston. It was a good sniping position and yet, as it turned out, her skills weren't needed. MacCready stood next to her, eyebrow cocked.

“You think maybe she's gone a little cuckoo?” he asked as they watched Cait drag a courser by his ear across the street, followed by a young woman who didn't appear to know what was going on but had wisely chosen not to upset the crazy lady. Nora shrugged helplessly. She'd entertained similar thoughts, feared in the back of her mind that she'd pushed Cait past the event horizon with this one.

“Beats me. She's not doing any harm though, so I think maybe we'll just ride this out? See if she bounces back by herself?”

MacCready scowled at her.

“She made me taste test cookies for four hours. You wanna rethink that stance on 'doing no harm'. I still can't look at sweet things without getting the shivers.”

Nora would have said something but was interrupted by Cait who approached them with the escaped synth in tow.

“B7-94 is back home. And Miri here” she pointed to the young woman who gave a shy wave. “said she's due for a ship to the Capital Wasteland, but I'm thinking why not bring her back to Sanctuary? We have free beds enough, don't we?”

The sentence was framed as a question but neither Nora nor MacCready had a doubt that the decision was already felled and that trying to speak against it would result in bodily harm.

“Yeah, sure.” Nora said therefore and elbowed MacCready in the sides until he got the hint and assured everyone what a great idea he thought that was.

 

Miri quickly blossomed into Cait's favourite granddaughter. One reason for that was easily that she other than most other synths didn't actually seemed to mind having a crazy Irish granny who spoiled her rotten every chance she got. Nora supposed it wasn't a bad thing. Having lived her entire life in the confines of the Institute a slave deprived of human gentleness, any synth could use someone to care for them. And Cait, despite the fact that Nora still wasn't sure she hadn't gone completely off her rocks, could be very caring if she wanted to. As of right now she'd somehow roped Nora into helping her with the Christmas dinner, Radstag surprise and a variety of baked goodies. All in all it smelled promising and Preston and Codsworth already decked the tables for the feast. Even Nick was there, despite not needing to eat, claiming some company around christmas was always nice. Someone had even coaxed Danse out of his power armour. He now sat wildly uncomfortable in one of the chairs, flinching at every sound, surrounded, as he was, by what he felt to be enemies. Hancock didn't make it easy on him either as he spent the time waiting making faces at him and laughing when Danse paled. A ghoul making faces could shake even the most hardened men.

“If he doesn't stop teasing Danse like that I'm going to have a stern word with him.” Cait said, following Nora's eyes outside. It was her cue to bring up the topic once again.

“You know, I wanted to talk to you about that. The synths being our grandchildren, I mean.” Nora said, helping Cait to lift the dinner out of the oven. When Cait made a gesture for her to go on, she did, thinking about how to word this.

“Everyone appreciates what you're doing. Especially Miri. She adores you, I can tell, but … you know … It's just …”

“Too much?” Cait finished her sentence. Nora nodded lamely. She didn't want to hurt her girlfriend but truth be told she'd started worrying. And not just about the coursers back at the Institute who refused to go out and hunt synths 'on moral grounds'.

Cait fiddled with the hem of her apron, smiling to herself.

“I know. Don't think I haven't noticed you all talking behind me back.”

She turned away from Nora, facing instead the window, behind which their friends – and family – gathered for what easily amounted to become the strangest dinner in recent history.

“I care about them, you know? When you think about it, the two of us are really the only family these poor things have. I know I'm not their real granny, but they deserve something, don't they? I figured, no one wants to be stuck with ol' Cait as family, so I make up for it as best I can. Having a crazy granny is better than having no granny at all, isn't it?”

Nora couldn't think of anything to say to that. Instead she closed the distance between them, turned Cait around and kissed her hard and long to drive home all the things she couldn't put into words. That she thought Cait was great family, that she felt blessed to have her every day. That even if her cookies tasted horrible, she could still be the greatest grandmother that ever lived.

All she did say was: “Let's serve dinner, shall we?”

 


End file.
